NHL knocking on Seattle’s door

Even though the National Basketball Association left for Oklahoma City in 2008, the city still has football’s Seahawks, baseball’s Mariners, soccer’s Sounders and the very popular University of Washington Huskies. Seattle also desperately wants back into the NBA, so where does that leave the National Hockey League?

Apparently still in a pretty good place, despite the fact the city missed out on landing the perpetually struggling Phoenix Coyotes last week.

People associated with sports who live and work in Seattle, or those who closely follow the Seattle situation, seem to think the NHL can work down the I-5, all of it depending on businessman Chris Hansen’s new arena being constructed.

Hansen was ready to stick a shovel in the ground had he been able to obtain the NBA Sacramento Kings in a buy-and-relocate deal. When that didn’t happen, his project was put on hold. After Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn acknowledged speaking to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman — and meeting with potential NHL investors — the drum started beating for Seattle to be a player in hockey’s best league.

On Tuesday, however, Seattle’s admission into the NHL was dealt a major blow, but not necessarily a fatal one, when Glendale council narrowly approved (4-3) a new 15-year, $225-million lease agreement with the Coyotes. The deal saved hockey in the desert. If the lease had been defeated, the team would have been moved — most likely to Seattle, which appears to be the No. 1 U.S. franchise destination, through either expansion or re-location, for both the NHL and NBA.

It seems everybody is knocking on the gates of the Emerald City these days.

The NBA Supersonics were a staple of the Seattle sports scene for 41 years and would still be there if former owner Howard Schultz, billionaire chairman and CEO of Starbucks, hadn’t washed his hands of the team when he couldn’t get public money to build a new arena. Schultz sold the team to Oklahoma businessman Clay Bennett in 2006. The Supersonics, despite a history of success on the court and at the box office, became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008.

So, Seattle has a winning history when it comes to pro basketball. As for hockey, Seattle hasn’t had a major professional team since the Seattle Metropolitans folded, along with the rest of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, in 1924. The Mets did manage to win a Stanley Cup in 1917, the first U.S.-based team to do so.

“I would like to be more definitive but the NHL is the great unknown in this marketplace,” said Art Thiel, the veteran journalist who’s been covering sports in Seattle since 1980. “For those of us who live in the sports bubble, we could easily say, of course, Seattle could accommodate all these franchises but we can’t really know. There is youth hockey here, and a strong history with the Western Hockey League in the 1960s and 1970s when it was the baseball equivalent of Triple A, but it wasn’t the NHL.”

According to Thiel, a former columnist with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and now president of website Sportspressnw.com, the large corporate community in Seattle doesn’t necessarily translate into major sports sponsorship.

“As many Fortune 500 companies as we have here, they are negligible participants in sports sponsorship,” noted Thiel. “With a small exception with Microsoft and the Sounders, the Fortune 500 companies are not participating in spectator sports sponsorship. The biggest company here in that regard that is invisible is Amazon. They’re employing many thousands of people at good salaries who would be the basic definition of a season-ticket holder: young, affluent people who have a passion for sports.

“Now it could well be those employees will happily follow sports but, traditionally in North America, you need big participation by the major companies in any town to buy the suites and all the other premium seating, and to become advertising sponsors, in order to break even or make a buck.”

If the NHL did come, a new building also has to come. But would Hansen and his group be willing to forge ahead unless they knew the NBA, the apple of their eye, was coming as well? If the NBA does come, does that push NHL hockey to No. 6 in the Seattle marketplace behind the Seahawks, Huskies, Sounders, Mariners and basketball? Thiel then poses another question.

“If the NHL arrives first, would it have whatever remains of the corporate sponsorships, or would those companies remain reluctant until the old familiar NBA gets here?” Thiel mused. “So I’m not convinced NHL hockey will work, but I’m also not writing it off. It’s just an unproven because we haven’t seen the NHL here. At least with the NBA, there was a 41-year history of support. That’s tangible.”

Meanwhile, up the I-5 in Vancouver, sports business analyst Tom Mayenknecht is quite bullish on the prospect of NHL hockey in Seattle. The population of the city is listed by Wikipedia as 3.5 million for the “urban” area and nearly four million for “metro,” making it the 15th-largest market in the U.S. But it is the demographics that catch Mayenknecht’s eye, not just the sheer numbers.

“Seattle would certainly be one of the more saturated markets in North America on a per-capita basis if it were successful in adding both an NHL franchise and NBA franchise to that mix,” Mayenknecht said. “I think what is important about Seattle is its unique population base in terms of demographics and the high-tech sector that give it a capacity larger than just its population base.

“There are a lot of young, upwardly mobile people living and working in Seattle, which is really important for the sports demographic, especially people buying partial season tickets and group season tickets,” Mayenknecht continued. “These are people who are starting to make money and want to be part of the social scene.”

Another key ingredient to making the NHL work in Seattle, he pointed out, is the city’s relative proximity to Vancouver and the Canucks’ gigantic fan base. If sports fans are willing to drive down the I-5 to catch Seahawk and Mariner games, or the Whitecaps versus the Sounders, imagine the stampede to see the Canucks play. Or the Maple Leafs. Or any other of the league’s glamour teams.

“That two-hour corridor is such a big factor in the viability of Seattle as an NHL market,” Mayenknecht said. “I think you would see a lot of interest from fans in the Lower Mainland. That proximity to a really, solid hockey market like Vancouver is a really important determinant here.”

Unlike Thiel, who was a little skeptical about corporate participation in the NHL, Mayenknecht feels there would be enough to go around.

“There is no question you’re pushing the envelope in terms of market capacity,” he said, “but I do think because of the nature of the market — the technology sector and the gaming industry that have a very strong presence there — these are heavily consumer marketing companies. They have marketing budgets bigger than your typical mix of companies. Microsoft is at the top of the pyramid there. So I think Seattle has some real elasticity in terms of its corporate capacity to rent suites. I think that has to be considered.”

Lawyer-player agent Carlos Sosa has lived and worked in Seattle since 1980 and figures the NHL can be viable, but notes that Seattle is a bit of a fickle town. There is a lot to do in the Pacific Northwest besides buying tickets to a sporting event so you had better ice a good product once the honeymoon period ends.

Seattle might even get two honeymoons. The first would be the immediate arrival of the team, which would be required to play in the inadequate 11,000-seat Key Arena, and the second when the new building opens. (The new building, of course, would have to be a given for the NHL to go there.)

“Seattle is a major-league market and it has a great hockey history,” commented Sosa, whose partner in his player agency since 2010 is former client Darcy Tucker. “If the building is built, I believe that any team that comes here for any major sport, basketball or hockey, would get a grace period of three to five years because everybody would want to see what the new building was like and that whole thing.

“But by years four and five, you better be competitive or you’re going to have problems. I don’t care if it’s Seattle or St. Louis, or any other franchise. Winning, I think we’d all agree, is the best marketing there is for any sport. You have to build a competitive franchise.”

Longtime junior hockey executive Russ Farwell, president and general manager of the WHL Seattle Thunderbirds, feels that if an NHL team comes, it will have to spend money everywhere, not simply on marketing and selling the big club.

“There just isn’t the grassroots-established interest here because there just aren’t enough ice rinks,” Farwell said. “So I don’t know if there is enough hockey support for the NHL right now. If the NHL came here, they would have to have a long-term plan to grow the sport. You’d have to build some rinks and let kids play the game, the same idea Dallas had when the Stars moved there.

“Now, you can sometimes force yourself on a market but, boy, you have to have either a great, great product or a real skilful group marketing the team because you can’t just plop yourself down and think it’s going to be a success.”

Farwell stated that he isn’t against the NHL coming to Seattle and perhaps having it take away hockey dollars from both his T-Birds and the nearby Everett Silvertips. He’s of the mind that a rising tide raises all boats.

“If the NHL came, I mean, yeah, the downside is they might take some of our fans, but the upside is that it would be such an explosion of hockey interest in the area,” he said. “Even if there was a year or two when we struggled, I think long term the growth in interest would make it so we could survive.”

The final word belongs to sports business analyst Mayenknecht, who is convinced Seattle remains the top untapped U.S. market for an NHL franchise and third overall behind Toronto (a second team, of course) and Quebec City.

“Toronto would be the safest bet and Quebec City would be very similar to what you saw with the Atlanta Thrashers moving to Winnipeg,” Mayenknecht said. “Seattle is right there and the biggest advantage it has, in terms of realistic prospects, is the NHL would be a lot more interested in retaining a U.S. franchise than moving it to Canada. So, based on all we’ve discussed, I do think Seattle is both viable and desirable for the NHL.”

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